Darrow-Kennedy 
Debate 


on 


'Is  the  Human  Race  Permanently 

Progressing  toward  a  Better 

Civilization?" 


'Is  the  Human  Race  Perman 

ently  Progressing  toward  a 

Better  Civilization?" 


Affirmative: 

Professor  John  C.  Kennedy 

Negative: 

Mr.  Clarence  S.  Darrow 


Mr.  Arthur  M.  Lewis 

Chairman 


at  the 

GARRICK  THEATRE,  CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS, 

MARCH  23,   1919, 

at  2:30 

Maclaskey  &  Maclaskey,  Court  Reporters 
Chicago. 


JOHN     F.     HIOGINS.    PRINTBB 
376-380     WEST     MONROE     ST. 


IS  THE  HUMAN  RACE  PERMANENTLY  PROGRESSING 

TOWARD  A  BETTER  CIVILIZATION?  stacR 

Annex 

Mr.    Lewis:      This  debate   this  afternoon   is  between   two 
friends  of  this  Society,  whom  you  have  heard  before.      It  has    ~ 
some  direct  relation  to  a  preceding  debate.      Our  friends  both    t-)3^> 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  their  various  points  of  difference 
belonged  in  the  domain  of  the  philosophy  of  life  and  society. 
So  this  afternoon  they  are  going  to  discuss  the  question  as  to 
whether   or   not   the   human   race   is   permanently   progressing 
toward  a  better  civilization. 

Our  friend,  Professor  John  Curtis  Kennedy,  who  was  pro- 
fessor for  some  time  at  the  University  of  Chicago  and  who  is 
now  alderman  of  the  27th  ward,  will  take  the  affirmative; 
and  our  oft-tried  and  always  loyal  friend  of  this  Society,  Mr. 
Clarence  S.  Darrow,  will  take  the  negative. 

This  will  be  the  last  time  we  shall  be  able  to  hear  our 
good  friend  Kennedy  on  this  stage  for  some  time.  I  do  not 
suppose  we  can  hear  him  next  year.  He  is  going  to  ramble 
around  the  world  and  see  what  is  doing — and,  of  course, 
there  is  a  great  deal  doing,  now,  and  I  would  not  mind  going 
along  with  him.  I  am  sure  we  shall  all  regret  his  departure 
as  a  loss  to  the  city  of  Chicago,  and  a  loss  to  us,  but  I  am  sure 
we  all  hope  after  he  has  been  away  awhile  he  will  feel  a  long- 
ing to  return,  and  will  reappear  in  our  midst.  And  I  can 
promise  him  when  he  does  return,  if  he  decides  to,  that  we 
will  give  him  a  royal  reception. 

I  shall  now  call  upon  Mr.  Kennedy  to  open  the  debate. 

PROFESSOR  KENNEDY'S  FIRST  SPEECH. 

Professor  Kennedy  said:  Mr.  Chairman,  Mr.  Darrow, 
Comrades  and  Friends:  Lester  F.  Ward  has  defined  social 
progress  as,  "Whatever  increases  the  sum  total  of  human  hap- 
piness." For  the  purpose  of  this  debate  I  am  willing  to  ac- 
cept this  definition  given  by  Mr.  Ward  and  to  endeavor  to 
show  that  social  evolution  has  been  following  along  lines 
which,  on  the  whole,  have  been  increasing  the  sum  total  of 
human  happiness.  There  are  certain  conditions  which  I  think 
all  of  us  will  agree  to  be  necessary  for  the  advancement  of 
human  happiness. 

In  the  first  place,  for  most  of  us,  at  least,  it  is  necessary 
to  have  a  good  subsistence,  to  have  the  necessaries  of  life  be- 
fore we  can  enjoy  any  great  amount  of  happiness.  We  must 
have  plenty  of  food — a  variety  of  food;  must  have  adequate 
clothing  and  shelter.  These  are  fundamental  requisites  for 
happiness  for  the  masses  of  the  people. 


4  DARROW-KEXNEDY  DEBATE. 

Then,  again,  we  need  freedom;  freedom  to  pursue  some 
line  of  activity  which  gives  us  satisfaction;  freedom  of 
thought;  freedom  of  expression;  freedom  to  develop  our  per- 
sonality so  that  our  various  talents  and  capacities  will  have  an 
opportunity  to  manifest  themselves. 

In  addition  to  this  freedom,  if  we  are  to  enjoy  happiness, 
I  think  most  of  us  must  have  leisure — we  must  have  the  time 
to  enjoy  the  fine  arts,  to  enjoy  music,  sculpture,  painting,  lit- 
erature, the  drama — we  must  have  the  time,  opportunity  and 
means  to  travel  and  enjoy  the  beauties  of  Nature. 

These  are  some  of  the  requirements  of  happiness  for  the 
human  race.  And  just  insofar  as  any  civilization  makes  it 
possible  for  an  increasingly  large  number  of  people  to  get  the 
necessities  of  life,  to  enjoy  freedom,  self  expression,  to  parti- 
cipate in  the  fine  arts,  and  enjoy  the  fine  arts,  I  would  say 
that  we  are  making  progress  toward  a  higher  civilization. 

Now,  there  have  been  a  number  of  civilizations  concern- 
ing which  we  have  a  great  deal  of  recorded  history.  Most  of 
those  civilizations  have  gone  through  certain  stages  of  evolu- 
tion. As  a  rule  they  originate  in  what  is  known  as  the  stage 
of  savagery.  After  many  years  the  peoples  of  these  various 
civilization  succeeded  in  rising  above  that  stage  of  savagery 
into  a  condition  called  barbarism.  Out  of  barbarism  they 
grew  into  what  is  commonly  called  civilization.  Such  has  been 
the  history  of  the  Egyptian  civilization,  for  example,  which 
existed  for  some  five  or  six  thousand  years  that  we  know  of. 
Such  was  the  history  of  the  Babylonian  civilization,  which  ex- 
isted three  or  four  thousand  years.  Such  was  the  history  of 
the  Greek  civilization  which  existed  for  a  shorter  period,  per- 
haps, only  for  a  thousand  years,  and  the  Roman  civilization 
which  existed  for  only  about  a  thousand  years. 

Such  has  been,  in  a  large  measure,  the  history  of  the 
civilization  in  which  we  now  find  ourselves  which  might  be 
called  the  Anglo-Saxon,  or  Germanic  civilization,  reaching 
back  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  or  Germanic  tribes.  The  civiliza- 
tion which  has  been  developed  in  the  Western  European 
countries  and  in  America  has  been  a  civilization  which  took 
something  from  all  the  previous  civilizations — some  of  the 
good  points  and  some  of  the  bad  points  from  each. 

As  a  rule  all  of  these  civilizations  have  gone  through  prac- 
tically the  same  course.  They  have  originated  in  savagery 
and  have  developed,  stage  after  stage,  to  something  approxi- 
mating the  kind  of  a  civilization  which  we  now  enjoy.  And 
if  it  were  true  that  recorded  history  simply  showed  that  this 
process  was  being  repeated  over  and  over  again,  if  it  were 
true  that  the  peoples  in  different  parts  of  the  world  started  in 
savagery  and  ran  the  gamut  up  to  a  certain  form  of  civiliza- 


KENNEDYS    FIRST    SPEECH.  5 

tion  and  then  lost  everything,  and  sunk  into  savagery  again, 
and  had  to  make  way  before  another  group  who  were  savages 
— I  think  if  that  were  the  case,  Mr.  Darrow  might  very  fairly 
maintain  that  there  was  no  permanent  advancement  in  civili- 
zation; that  there  was  simply  a  certain  cycle  through  which 
people  run  and  we  will  suffer  the  same  fate  that  other  peoples 
have  in  previous  historic  epochs.  But,  in  my  opinion,  the  his- 
tories of  peoples  do  not  sustain  that  position. 

So  far  as  I  can  see,  every  cvilization  takes  over  something 
of  the  preceding  civilization,  and  this  is  especially  true  of  the 
civilization  in  which  we  live  and  of  which  we  are  a  part;  in 
fact,  I  do  not  think  it  would  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that 
practically  everything  worth  while  achieved  by  the  people  in 
any  previous  civilization  has  been  taken  in  and  utilized  by  our 
present  civilization.  Everything  achieved  by  the  Egyptians 
and  Babylonians,  the  Chaldeans,  Greeks  and  Romans,  and  a 
great  deal  of  what  has  been  achieved  by  the  Chinese  and  Jap- 
anese has  been  made  a  part  of  the  civilization  of  the  European 
countries  and  America. 

What  are  some  of  the  advantages  that  have  been  gained 
by  the  development  of  modern  civilization?  What  really  has 
been  achieved?  Wherein  has  the  sum  total  of  the  happiness 
of  the  human  race  been  increased?  I  suppose  I  might  in  a 
way  compare  the  savage  state  with  the  present  state  of  man- 
kind in  order  to  bring  out  the  difference — the  contrast  be- 
tween the  conditions  under  which  savages  lived  and  the  con- 
ditions under  which  we  live.  That  perhaps  would  take  too 
much  time,  if  I  attempted  to  give  the  details;  and  again,  even 
if  I  did  give  the  details,  some  of  you  might  say  we  have  heard 
you  before,  and  as  a  socialist,  we  know  what  you  have  already 
condemned — capitalistic  civilization.  We  have  heard  you  de- 
scribe the  poverty  and  the  misery;  we  have  heard  you  picture 
the  extent  of  crime  and  of  lunacy  and  of  prostitution,  and  all 
the  horrors  of  war,  and  the  tyranny  of  the  present  civilization. 
How  can  you  say,  in  view  of  the  position  you  have  previously 
taken  as  a  socialist  in  condemning  the  capitalistic  order,  that 
to  be  a  savage  was  worse — that  the  present  capitalistic  civili- 
zation is  any  better? 

Well,  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  face  that  proposition  frank- 
ly and  squarely;  in  fact,  that  is  just  the  reason  I  am  here  to- 
day. If  I  did  not  believe  that  the  human  race  had  made  any 
progress  whatever  up  to  today,  I  would  not  have  much  hope 
for  the  future.  If  I  could  not  point  out  wherein  even  the  pres- 
ent capitalistic  order  is  superior  to  the  life  which  was  enjoyed 
by  the  savage;  if  I  could  not  show  that  on  the  whole  people 
today  are  enjoying  a  better  life  than  they  did  in  the  days  gone 
by  under  savagery,  then  I  would  not  have  much  hope  that 


G  HARROW-KENNEDY   DEBATE. 

any  time  in  the  future  they  would  enjoy  a  better  life.  So,  per- 
haps, the  best  way  to  get  at  the  crux  of  the  matter  is  to  com- 
pare our  present  civilization  with  the  civilization  of  the  sav- 
age or  his  lack  of  civilization;  at  least,  on  a  few  of  the  impor- 
tant points. 

One  of  the  best  authorities  that  I  know  of,  when  it  comes 
to  observation  and  reporting  upon  the  conditions  of  people, 
was  Charles  Darwin.  For  one  thing,  he  was  very  accurate 
in  his  observations,  and  secondly,  he  was  very  truthful.  So 
far  as  I  know,  his  truthfulness  has  never  been  questioned.  So, 
therefore,  I  want  to  read  to  you  a  passage  or  two  describing 
savagery  as  he  saw  it  in  some  of  the  primitive  places  he  visited 
in  his  Voyage  on  the  Beagle  around  the  world.  This  will  take 
perhaps  three  of  four  minutes  to  read,  but  inasmuch  as  it  is 
an  entirely  trustworthy  account  of  savage  life  and  gives  us  a 
basis  upon  which  to  make  our  comparison,  I  think  it  is  worth 
while  to  read  it.  He  says: 

"While  going  one  day  on  shore  near  Wollaston  Island, 
we  pulled  alongside  a  canoe  with  six  Fuegians.  These 
were  the  most  abject  and  miserable  creatures  I  anywhere 
beheld.  *  *  *  These  Fuegians  in  the  canoe  were  quite 
naked,  and  even  one  full-grown  woman  was  absolutely 
so.  It  was  raining  heavily,  and  the  fresh  water,  together 
with  the  spray,  trickled  down  her  body.  In  another  har- 
bor not  far  distant,  a  woman,  who  was  suckling  a  recent- 
ly-born child,  came  one  day  alongside  the  vessel,  and  re- 
mained there  out  of  mere  curiosity,  while  the  sleet  fell  and 
thawed  on  her  naked  bosom,  and  on  the  skin  of  her 
naked  baby!  These  poor  wretches  were  stunted  in  their 
growth,  their  hideous  faces  bedaubed  with  white  paint, 
their  skins  filthy  and  greasy,  their  hair  entangled,  their 
voices  discordant,  and  their  gestures  violent.  Viewing 
such  men,  one  can  hardly  make  one's  self  believe  that 
they  are  fellow  creatures,  and  inhabitants  of  the  same 
world.  It  is  a  common  subject  of  conjecture  what  pleas- 
ure in  life  some  of  the  lower  animals  can  enjoy;  how  much 
more  reasonably  the  same  question  may  be  asked  with  re- 
spect to  these  barbarians!  At  night,  five  or  six  human 
beings,  naked  and  scarcely  protected  from  the  wind  and 
rain  of  this  tempestuous  climate,  sleep  on  the  wet  ground 
coiled  up  like  animals.  Whenever  it  is  low  water,  winter 
or  summer,  night  or  day,  they  must  rise  to  pick  shell-fish 
from  the  rocks;  and  the  women  either  dive  to  collect  sea- 
eggs,  or  sit  patiently  in  their  canoes,  and  with  a  baited 
hair-line  without  any  hook,  jerk  out  little  fish.  If  a  seal 
is  killed,  or  the  floating  carcass  of  a  putrid  whale  discov- 
ered, it  is  a  feast;  and  such  miserable  food  is  assisted  by 
a  few  tasteless  berries  and  fungi. 


KENNEDYS    FIRST    SPEECH.  7 

"They  often  suffer  from  famine:  I  heard  Mr.  Low, 
a  sealing-master  intimately  acquainted  with  the  natives 
of  this  country,  give  a  curious  account  of  the  state  of  a 
party  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  natives  on  the  west  coast, 
who  were  very  thin  and  in  great  distress.  A  succession 
of  gales  prevented  the  women  from  getting  shell-fish  on 
the  rocks,  and  they  could  not  go  out  in  their  canoes  to 
catch  seal.  A  small  party  of  these  men  one  morning  set 
out,  and  the  other  Indians  explained  to  him  that  they 
•were  going  a  four  days'  journey  for  food;  on  their  re- 
turn, Low  went  to  meet  them,  and  he  found  them  ex- 
cessively tired,  each  man  carrying  a  great  square  piece 
of  putrid  whale's  blubber  with  a  hole  in  the  middle, 
through  which  they  put  their  heads,  like  the  Gauchos  do 
through  their  ponchos  or  cloaks.  As  soon  as  the  blub- 
ber was  brought  into  a  wigwam,  an  old  man  cut  off  thin 
slices,  and  muttering  over  them,  broiled  them  for  a  min- 
ute, and  distributed  them  to  the  famished  party,  who 
during  this  time  preserved  a  profound  silence.  Mr.  Low 
believed  that  whenever  a  whale  is  cast  on  shore,  the  na- 
tives bury  large  pieces  of  it  in  the  sand,  as  a  resource  in 
time  of  famine;  and  a  native  boy,  whom  he  had  on 
board,  once  found  a  stock  thus  buried.  The  different 
tribes  when  at  war  are  cannibals.  From  the  concurrent 
but  quite  independent  evidence  of  the  boy  taken  by  Mr. 
Low,  and  of  Jemmy  Button,  it  is  certainly  true  that, 
when  pressed  in  winter  by  hunger,  they  kill  and  devour 
their  old  women  before  they  kill  their  dogs;  the  boy, 
being  asked  by  Mr.  Low  why  they  did  this,  answered, 
'Doggies  catch  otters,  old  women  no.'  This  boy  de- 
scribed the  manner  in  which  they  are  killed  by  being  held 
over  smoke  and  thus  choked;  he  imitated  their  screams  as 
a  joke,  and  described  the  parts  of  their  bodies  which  are 
considered  best  to  eat.  Horrid  as  such  a  death  by  the 
hands  of  their  friends  and  relatives  must  be,  the  fears 
of  the  old  women,  when  hunger  begins  to  press,  are  more 
painful  to  think  of;  we  were  told  that  they  often  run 
away  into  the  mountains,  but  that  they  are  pursued  by 
the  men  and  brought  back  to  the  slaughter-house  at  their 
own  firesides!" 

I  have  taken  the  trouble  to  read  this  because  it  describes 
the  condition  of  human  beings  in  the  savage  state;  not  only 
the  group  that  Darwin  saw.  but  as  all  anthropologists  agree 
it  is  a  characteristic  stage  through  which  human  beings  oass 
when  they  are  in  this  savage  state.  And,  it  is  a  state  from 
which,  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  learn  from  the  best  of  anthro- 
pologists, all  peoples  have  risen  and  developed,  whether  they 


8  D ARROW-KENNEDY  DEBATE. 

be  oriental  or  occidental  peoples.  If  you  run  back  the  history 
far  enough  it  always  run  back  to  this  kind  of  savagery. 

Now,  bad  as  conditions  are  today;  great  as  poverty  is 
today;  great  as  the  misery  is  today,  I  ask  you  how  many  of 
you  would  like  to  go  back  to  the  condition  that  these  people 
were  in,  whom  Darwin  describes?  And  how  many  of  the 
people  are  there  you  know,  even  under  capitalism,  who 
would  exchange  the  position  they  find  themselves  in,  with  the 
position  of  those  savages  who  had  no  certainty  as  to  food  or 
clothing  or  shelter,  who  had  no  freedom  which  they  could 
call  real  freedom,  because  they  never  knew  what  was  going 
to  be  their  condition  on  the  next  day,  and  who  knew  nothing 
whatever  of  the  arts,  of  literature  and  of  the  achievements 
which  to  us  make  life  worth  while? 

Now,  it  seems  to  me  that  tracing  evolution  from  those 
conditions  to  the  present,  we  can  see  how,  step  by  step,  we 
have  won  something  worth  while.  And  this  is  a  significant 
fact,  that  you  can  judge  the  advancement  of  a  civilization  by 
the  tools  and  by  the  methods  of  production  which  are  used 
by  that  civilization  in  order  to  secure  a  livelihood.  Und/nr 
the  most  primitive  conditons  they  have  to  live  by  fishing, 
hunting,  to  live  off  whatever  they  can  pick  up  practically 
without  the  use  of  tools  and  without  any  great  knowledge 
with  which  to  control  their  environment. 

But,  mankind  advances  out  of  this  stage,  first  by  learning 
the  use  of  fire;  then  by  domesticating  animals;  then  by  learn- 
ing the  primitive  methods  of  agriculture,  and  gradually  by  a 
development  of  knowledge  regarding  the  forces  of  Nature, 
man  learns  how  to  get  from  Nature  a  larger  and  a  better  liv- 
ing and  a  more  certain  living.  So  that,  if  you  compare  the 
condition  of  mankind  today  with  that  of  the  savage,  so  far  as 
subsistence  is  concerned,  and  that  is  fundamental,  you  can  say 
today  we  have  a  vastly  greater  variety;  we  have  a  greater 
quantity;  w  have  a  far  greater  degree  of  security  so  far  as  the 
great  mass  of  the  people  is  concerned.  I  am  aware,  of  course, 
of  the  fact  that  during  certain  conditions,  as  for  example, 
during  the  war  in  Europe,  there  will  be  conditions  of  famine. 
Yet  taking  the  capitalistic  system  as  it  has  prevailed  during  the 
last  hundred  years,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  millions  of 
people  living  under  that  civilization  have  had  a  far  greater 
security  so  far  as  livlihood  is  concerned,  a  far  greater  variety 
of  food  stuffs  than  they  would  have  had  under  the  conditions 
that  prevailed  during  the  period  of  savagery. 

Then,  when  you  come  to  the  second  test  of  advancement, 
the  freedom  of  the  individual,  the  opportunity  to  develop 
one's  personality,  to  have  freedom  of  thought  and  freedom 
of  expression,  we  find  again  that  the  savages  and  barbarians 


KENNEDYS    FIRST    SPEECH.  9 

were  bound  much  more  strictly  than  the  civilized  man  of  to- 
day. They  had  their  fetishism;  their  superstitions;  they  were 
enslaved  by  their  fears,  their  ignorance  and  superstitions  so 
that  they  did  things  and  lead  a  life  which  was  anything  but  a 
free  life.  The  average  person  pictures  to  himself  the  free 
Indian;  the  free  Barbarian,  the  free  savage,  as  one  who  can 
do  as  he  pleases  and  go  where  he  pleases.  Not  so.  They 
were  bound,  as  anthropologists  prove,  beyond  any  question, 
by  all  sorts  of  superstitions;  all  sorts  of  customs  and  all  sorts 
of  traditions  which  made  it  impossible  for  the  individual  to 
express  any  individuality  whatever.  He  lost  his  individuality 
under  the  rules  of  customs  and  traditions  of  the  tribe.  So, 
this  primitive  freedom  is  a  false  idea,  as  we  find  when  we 
make  an  actual  study  of  the  life  of  these  savages.  It  has  been 
done  by  Lewis  Morgan  who  lived  for  many  years  among  the 
Iroquois  Indians,  and  by  other  students  who  have  studied  the 
conditions  at  first  hand.  To  illustrate  what  some  of  those 
conditions  are,  I  select  one  or  two  examples  from  Herbert 
Spencer's  Sociology.  He  gives  dozens  of  them  to  illustrate 
how  the  primitive  peoples  are  bound  by  their  superstitions. 
For  example,  he  says,  speaking  of  some  of  the  Mexican 
Indians: 

"Ximinez  tells  us  regarding  the  Indians  of  Vera  Paz 
that  'when  a  lord  was  dying  they  immediately  killed  as 
many  slaves  as  he  had,  that  they  might  precede  him  and 
prepare  the  house  for  their  master." 

"In  Dahomey  immediately  the  king  dies  his  wives  be- 
gin to  destroy  all  his  furniture  and  things  of  value,  as  well 
as  their  own:  and  to  murder  one  another.  On  one  oc- 
casion two  hundred  and  eighty-five  of  the  women  were 
thus  killed  before  the  new  king  could  stop  it." 

"Savages  and  barbarians  also  frequently  bury  most 
or  all  of  the  valuable  property  with  the  deceased." 
I  will  not  burden  you  with  example  after  example  of  this 
sort.  We  know  how  the  Hindoos  for  example,  had  the  cus- 
tom of  throwing  their  children  in  some  cases  into  the  Ganges 
River  and  other  rivers,  as  a  sort  of  religious  sacrifice  to  pro- 
pitiate the  wrath  of  the  gods.  These  customs  have  existed 
among  savage  peoples.  But,  we  have  largely  outgrown  them. 
I  want  to  read  to  you  to  show  you  how  recently  these 
superstitions  have  prevailed  among  peoples  a  citation  from 
Andrew  D.  White's  work  on  "A  History  of  the  Warfare  of 
Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom".  People  of  the  mid- 
dle ages  were  governed  by  the  same  superstition  believing 
it  was  a  religious  duty  to  carry  out  some  of  the  most  atrocious 
performances.  Here  is  a  case  showing  how  some  of  the 
Christians  persecuted  the  Jews: 


10  DARROW-KENXEDY   DEBATE. 

"But  this  sort  of  theological  reasoning  developed  an 
idea  far  more  disastrous,  and  this  was  that  Satan,  in  caus- 
ing pestilences,  used  as  his  emissaries  especially  Jews  and 
witches.  The  proof  of  this  belief  in  the  case  of  the  Jews 
was  seen  in  the  fact  that  they  escaped  with  a  less  per- 
centage of  disease  than  did  the  Christians  in  the  great 
plague  periods.  This  was  doubtless  due  in  some  measure 
to  their  remarkable  sanitary  system,  which  had  probably 
originated  thousands  of  years  before  in  Egypt,  and  had 
been  handed  down  through  Jewish  lawgivers  and  states- 
men. Certainly  they  observed  more  careful  sanitary  rules 
and  more  constant  abstinence  from  dangerous  foods  than 
was  usual  among  Christians;  but  the  public  at  large  could 
not  understand  so  simple  a  cause,  and  jumped  to  the  con- 
clusion that  their  immunity  resulted  from  protection  by 
Satan,  and  that  this  protection  was  repaid  and  the  pes- 
tilence caused  by  their  wholesale  poisoning  of  Christians. 
As  a  result  of  this  mode  of  thought,  attempts  were  made 
in  all  parts  of  Europe  to  propitiate  the  Almighty,  to 
thwart  Satan,  and  to  stop  the  plague  by  torturing  and 
murdering  the  Jews.  Throughout  Europe  during  great 
pestilences  we  hear  of  extensive  burnings  of  this  devoted 
people.  In  Bavaria,  at  the  time  of  the  Black  Death,  it 
is  computd  that  twelve  thousand  Jews  thus  perished;  in 
the  small  town  of  Erfurt  the  number  is  said  to  have  been 
three  thousand;  in  Strasburg,  the  Rue  Brulee  remains  as 
a  monument  to  the  two  thousand  Jews  burned  there  for 
poisoning  the  wells  and  causing  the  plague  of  1348;  at 
the  royal  castle  of  Chinon,  near  Tours,  an  immense 
trench  was  dug,  filled  with  blazing  wood,  and  in  a  single 
day  one  hundred  and  sixty  Jews  were  burned.  Every- 
where in  continental  Europe  this  mad  persecution  went 
on." 

Let   me    give    you    another    illustration — a    paragraph    or 
two   regarding  the  persecution  of  so-called  witches: 

"As  to  witches,  the  reasons  for  believing  them  the 
cause  of  pestilence  also  came  from  fear.  This  belief,  too, 
had  been  poured  mainly  from  Oriental  sources  into  our 
sacred  books  and  thence  into  the  early  Church,  and  was 
strengthened  by  a  whole  line  of  Church  authorities,  fath- 
ers, doctors,  and  saints;  but,  above  all,  by  the  great  bull, 
Summis  Desiderantes,  issued  by  Pope  Innocent  VIII.  in 
1  484.  This  utterance  from  the  seat  of  St.  Peter  infallibly 
committed  the  Church  to  the  idea  that  witches  are  a  great 
cause  of  disease  storms,  and  various  ills  which  afflict  hu- 
manity; and  the  Scripture  on  which  the  action  recom- 
mended against  witches  in  this  papal  bull,  as  well  as  in 


KENNEDY'S  FIRST  SPEECH.  11 

so  many  sermons  and  treatises  for  centuries  afterward, 
was  based,  was  the  famous  text,  'Thou  shalt  not  surfer 
a  witch  to  live.'  This  idea  persisted  long,  and  the  evolu- 
tion of  it  is  among  the  most  fearful  things  in  human  his- 
tory." 

Now,  when  we  are  thinking  about  the  conditions  that  pre- 
vail now,  it  is  just  as  well  to  know  a  little  bit  about  the  con- 
ditions that  prevailed  in  previous  periods.  And,  when  you 
realize  in  a  single  century,  in  Germany  that  about  one  hun- 
dred thousand  people  were  put  to  death  for  witchcraft,  you 
get  some  idea  of  the  blackness  that  must  have  prevailed  over 
those  vast  districts  inhabited  by  millions  of  people  during  the 
middle  ages. 

So,  I  maintain  that  limited  as  our  freedom  is  today  in  many 
respects,  all  sorts  of  laws  being  on  the  statute  books  to  limit 
us  in  this  way  and  that  way — limited  as  our  freedom  is,  still 
compared  with  the  conditions  that  prevailed  under  savagery, 
when  they  used  to  slaughter  people  for  all  sorts  of  super- 
stition; compared  with  the  conditions  that  prevailed  even 
during  the  middle  ages,  when  they  were  slaughtered  by  the 
tens  of  thousands  on  theological  grounds,  I  say  today  we  have 
a  vastly  greater  degree  of  freedom,  so  far  as  intellect  and 
discussion  are  concerned,  and  by  that  I  do  not  mean  to  say 
for  a  moment  everything  is  all  right;  that  we  have  won  every- 
thing we  need,  but  am  simply  comparing  conditions  today 
with  those  that  prevailed  in  what,  in  my  opinion,  were  far 
darker  periods  in  human  history. 

Not  only  has  there  been  a  great  advance  as  to  subsistence 
and  liberty  of  thought  and  discussion;  I  likewise  believe  hu- 
manity as  a  whole  today  is  in  a  far  better  position  to  enjoy 
the  arts  and  sciences  and  the  beauties  of  nature  and  all  mat- 
ters which  give  satisfaction  to  mankind.  And,  there  again, 
of  course,  we  must  frankly  admit  and  recognize  that  large 
masses  of  people  do  not  fully  appreciate  in  the  benefits  of 
modern  civilization.  We  must  admit  that  for  a  great  many 
people  these  treasures  are  locked  up.  But,  it  is  a  question  of 
comparing  things  as  they  are  now,  with  things  as  they  were  in 
previous  times,  not  as  they  might  be  under  ideal  conditions. 
What  has  happened  so  far  as  science  and  literature  and 
art  and  all  that  sort  of  thing  is  concerned? 

In  the  first  place,  up  to  about  two  or  three  hundred  years 
ago,  there  was  not  any  science  worth  mentioning.  It  is  true 
that  the  Greeks  had  achieved  advancement  in  certain  direc- 
tions; that  there  were  individuals  such  as  Aristotle,  who  show- 
ed wonderful  power  intellectually,  but,  comparing  the  science 
of  antiquity  with  the  science  of  today,  nobody  can  seriously 
maintain  that  that  science  pmounted  to  very  much.  As  a 


12  DARRO  \V-KEXXEDY  DEBATE. 

matter  of  fact,  it  was  hardly  a  beginning.  Until  recent  times, 
when  the  experimental  and  inductive  method  has  been  ap- 
plied and  utilized,  we  could  not  maintain  that  any  real  science 
was  in  existence;  but,  now  we  have  real  science  of  mathe- 
matics, astronomy,  chemistry  and  physics;  we  have  a  real 
science  of  biology;  and  we  have  developing  sciences  of  psy- 
chology and  sociology;  and  the  applied  sciences  in  the  various 
engineering  departments,  and  so  on.  In  fact,  we  have  accu- 
mulated a  very  wonderful  mass  of  knowledge  which  any  hu- 
man being,  if  he  is  intellectual  at  all,  must  find  some  pleasure 
in  pursuing.  Some  prefer  history;  some  are  interested  in 
mathematics,  or  biology — each  one  has  his  choice.  But,  the 
fact  remains  that  the  superstition  and  darkness  of  the  early 
and  middle  ages  has  really  been  supplanted  very  largely  by 
the  light  of  modern  civilization. 

Of  course,  there  are  still  a  good  many  people  in  darkness; 
we  must  admit  that.  We  call  it  Christian  Science  or  some- 
thing of  that  sort!  But,  we  are  comparing  conditions  as  a 
whole,  as  they  prevailed  in  the  middle  ages  or  the  earlier 
periods,  with  conditions  as  they  prevail  today.  And,  when 
you  recognize  that  in  every  city,  town,  hamlet  there  are  li- 
braries; when  you  realize  that  millions  and  millions  of  people 
are  reading  and  having  access  to  these  libraries;  when  you 
realize  meetings  like  this  are  going  on,  as  you  know,  year 
after  year  and  distributing  the  literature  and  ideals  of  modern 
science  to  the  people  of  this  country — and,  not  only  in  this 
country  but  in  other  countries —  you  must  admit  there  has 
been  an  advance  in  human  freedom  and  enjoyment  in  that 
direction. 

I  do  not  see  how  anybody  can  seriously  maintain  that  the 
conditions  under  savagery,  barbarism  or  in  the  middle  ages 
are  on  a  par  with  the  conditions  today,  even  though  they  are 
not  as  we  would  like  to  see  them  today. 

Now,  I  have  briefly  touched  upon  a  few  of  the  tests  of 
human  advancement.  Limited  as  we  are  to  an  hour  and  a 
half  apiece,  one  cannot  take  all  of  the  details  in  these  var- 
ious arts  and  achievements. 

Let  us  take  the  field  of  music.  Compare  the  tom-toms 
and  the  bones  of  the  savage  music  with,  let  us  say,  the  Chi- 
cago Orchestra,  or  the  Grand  Opera  performances;  the  music 
of  the  barbarism  with  tKe  music  of  a  Wagner,  a  Schuman,  a 
Gounod,  Greig,  or  a  Verdi.  There  is  no  comparison  at  all. 
We  know  people  enjoy  it  because  they  pay  their  money — 
that  is  a  pretty  good  test;  if  they  do  not  enjoy  it,  they  would 
not  go.  These  splendid  compositions  of  the  composers  sure- 
ly give  great  enjoyment  and  happiness. 


KENNEDY'S  FIRST  SPEECH.  13 

It  is  the  same  way  in  literature.  In  the  first  place,  the  sav- 
age did  not  have  any  language  at  all  except  a  sort  of  sign 
language.  He  may  have  had,  as  he  developed,  a  vocabulary 
of  two  or  three  hundred  words.  But,  we  now  have  not  only 
an  oral  and  written  language,  but  we  have  a  printed  language 
and  an  unlimited  vocabulary;  and  the  means  of  spreading  of 
the  ideals  and  ideas  of  literature  among  practically  all  the 
people  through  books,  newspapers,  and  our  vast  resources  of 
communication.  The  savage  had  no  telephone,  no  telegraph, 
no  cable,  no  means  of  exchange  of  ideas.  All  you  need  to 
know  to  realize  how  far  we  have  advanced  is  to  ask  yourself 
what  sort  of  a  life  you  would  have  if  you  took  away  all  the 
printing  presses;  took  away  all  our  means  of  communication; 
abolished  practically  all  literature  and  went  back  to  a  stage 
where  you  would  have  to  communicate  with  one  another  by 
gestures  and  perhaps  two  or  three  hundred  words;  then  you 
would  be  back  under  primitive  conditions.  We  have  got 
away  from  that  and  built  up  this  wonderful  literature  which 
makes  it  possible  for  a  Shakespeare,  an  Ibsen,  a  Poe,  a  Haupt- 
man,  a  Hugo,  or  a  Tolstoi,  to  portray  life  as  it  is,  and  it  is 
possible  for  anybody  to  enjoy  their  works.  So,  you  can  see 
that  literature  is  an  achievement  of  civilization;  you  cannot 
have  it  without  civilization. 

Likewise,  we  have  our  museums  and  our  art  galleries. 

What  is  the  foundation?  It  is  the  economic  foundation 
of  modern  civilization.  That  brings  me  to  what  to  my  mind 
is  one  of  the  most  important  features  in  this  debate.  What 
is  the  outlook  for  this  future?  Because  in  reckoning  what 
the  achievements  of  this  civilization  are,  I  reckon  as  one  of 
the  most  important  is  the  organization  and  unification  of  the 
working  class.  That  organzation  of  the  workers  is  our  best 
guarantee  of  future  progress. 

The  capitalists  did  not  mean  to  organize  and  unify  the 
working  class;  they  did  not  mean,  as  a  means  of  developing 
culture  to  develop  a  co-operative  system  of  production  such 
as  we  have  today.  That  was  not  their  aim.  But,  neverthe- 
less, as  Engels  and  Marx  have  so  well  portrayed  in  their  Com- 
munist Manifesto,  the  bourgeoisie  did  develop  a  wonderful 
organization  for  producing  wealth,  and  it  is  on  the  basis  of 
this  wonderful  organization  which  has  been  developed  that 
it  will  be  possible  to  build  a  splendid  civilization  in  which  all 
will  be  able  to  participate.  Within  this  modern  capitalistic 
civilization  the  forces  have  been  developed  which  will  secure 
for  future  generations  everything  that  is  worth  while;  and  we 
will  eliminate  the  evils  which  have  grown  up  and  spread  un- 
der capitalism.  The  forces  are  all  present  within  our  civili- 
zation; they  are  here  in  our  midst,  which  are  going  to  pre- 


14  DARROVV-KENNEDY  DEBATE. 

serve  everything  that  is  good,  and  going  to  make  it  possible 
for  the  masses  to  enjoy  all  these  things;  not  only  to  preserve 
everything  that  is  good,  but  to  make  possible  a  much  higher 
development  of  civilization  than  we  have  had  in  the  past. 

At  this  time,  I  want  to  read  just  a  paragraph  from  what 
will  go  down  into  history  as  one  of  the  greatest  books  that 
was  ever  written,  and  that  is  the  Communist  Manifesto.  It 
gives  the  key  to  human  history.  If  there  is  any  philosophy; 
if  there  is  any  interpretation  of  history  that  makes  it  possible 
for  us  to  understand  the  evolution  of  mankind,  from  primi- 
tive conditions  up  to  the  present,  and  gives  us  a  key  with 
which  to  unlock  the  future,  it  is  the  philosophy  of  the  mater- 
ialistic conception  of  history,  or  as  some  call  it,  the  economic 
interpretation  of  history.  It  will  take  just  a  moment  to  read 
a  few  sentences  in  which  Engels,  in  his  introduction,  to  the 
Communist  Manifesto,  sums  up  the  economic  interpretation 
of  history: 

"In    every    historical    epoch,    the   prevailing    mode    of 
economic    production    and    exchange,    and    the    social    or- 
ganization   necessarily    following   from   it,    form    the   basis 
upon  which  is  built  up,  and  from  which  alone  can  be  ex- 
plained, the  political  and  intellectual  history  of  that  epoch; 
that   consequently   the   whole   history    of   mankind    (since 
the  dissolution  of  primitive  tribal  society,  holding  land  in 
common  ownership)   has  been  a  history  of  class  struggles, 
contests  between  exploiting  and  exploited,  ruling  and  op- 
pressed classes;   that  the  history  in  which,   now-a-days,   a 
stage  has  been  reached  when  the  exploited  and  oppressed 
class — the     proletariat — cannot     attain     its     emancipation 
from  the  sway  of  the  exploiting  and  ruling  class — the  bour- 
geoise — without,  at  the  same  time,   and  once  and  for  all, 
emancipating   society   at  large   from   all    exploitation,    op- 
pression, class-distinctions  and  class-struggles." 
There  is  the  key  to  human  history  and  the  one  who  mas- 
ters that  interpretation  of  history  and  applies  it  to  the  develop- 
ment from  the  primitive  savage  stage  up  to  the  present,   can 
see  that  as  the  tools  developed;  as  the  means  of  production 
developed;  as  man's  understanding  of  the  forces  of  Nature 
developed;    as    the    industrial    system    developed;    civilization 
moved  forward.     And,  it  is  only  when  something  happens  to 
that   industrial    system   that  you   make    any   lasting   progress. 
And,  the  •whole  lesson  of  history  is  this,  that  economicallv,  we 
have  been  progressing  from  a  very  simple,  crude  stage  of  pro- 
duction up  to  a  higher  and  higher  stage  of  production,  which 
makes  possible,   what?      It  makes  possible  a  vast  amount  of 
wealth;  which  makes  possible  a  great  amount  of  leisure;  which 
makes  possible   for   the   first  time  in   all   human   history  real 


DARROW's    FIRST   SPEECH.  15 

freedom.  It  is  only  by  the  conquest  of  the  forces  of  Nature 
— by  the  organization  of  the  productive  forces — by  the  appli- 
cation of  science  to  the  natural  resources  and  the  powers  of 
the  universe;  it  is  only  thus,  that  we  get  the  foundation  for  a 
real  civilization,  a  real  fredom. 

And,  the  lesson  of  all  human  history  is,  despite  all  the 
superstition,  despite  all  of  the  tyranny,  despite  all  of  the  suf- 
ferings of  the  past,  we  have  been  marching  forward  toward 
that  goal,  getting  an  economic  foundation  for  a  real  civiliza- 
tion. And,  today,  we  are  just  about  at  the  point  where  it  is 
within  the  grasp  of  humanity  to  build  a  co-operative  common- 
wealth where  all  will  be  free;  where  all  will  enjoy  the  fruits 
of  human  progress;  where  all  will  be  free,  not  only  economic- 
ally, but  intellectually  and  spiritually;  where  the  fogs  of  su- 
perstition will  pass  away;  where  freedom  of  thought  will 
prevail  and  where  mankind  really  will  enjoy  happiness. 

And,  it  is  because  I  believe  that;  because  I  see  what  has 
been  already  achieved,  I  am  ready  to  say  here  today,  we  are 
making  permanent  progress  toward  a  higher  civilization! 

MR.   DARROW'S  FIRST  SPEECH. 

Mr.  Darrow  said:  The  next  time  I  have  a  debate  I  am 
going  to  argue  with  somebody  who  disagrees  with  me.  I  am 
going  to  take  somebody  who  is  really  ignorant  enough  to  be- 
lieve the  things  that  I  do  not  believe.  Now,  I  have  one  advan- 
tage in  this  debate  anyway;  Mr.  Kennedy  said  something  to 
the  effect  that  he  was  a  little  nervous  for  fear  some  of  his  so- 
cialist friends  would  think  he  was  contradicting  the  things  he 
had  said  before.  Now,  I  always  rather  like  to  contradict  things 
I  have  said  before.  For,  if  it  is  not  a  sign  of  progress,  it  is  at 
least  a  sign  of  change,  and  change  is  generally  taken  for  prog- 
ress in  this  world. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  civilized  man  of  today  is  hap- 
pier than  the  savage  or  not.  I  fancy  that  I  am  happier  here  in 
Chicago  than  I  would  be  in  Tierra  del  Fuego,  but  I  kind  of 
fancy  that  those  natives  are  happier  there  than  they  would  be 
here!  I  would  hate  to  be  a  barn-yard  hog,  but  I  fancy  if  they 
had  any  brains — which  they  have  not — they  would  hate  to  be 
men.  I  am  inclined  to  think,  on  the  whole,  they  are  happier, 
while  it  lasts,  and  it  does  not  last  very  long  either  way  so  I 
do  not  see  there  is  much  in  that.  The  question  that  I  am  inter- 
ested in  is  not  the  one  that  my  friend  discussed — I  do  not 
mean  that  his  discussion  was  not  interesting.  It  was  both  inter- 
esting and  learned,  especially  learned,  and  still  it  does  not  get 
anywhere. 

Now,  I  really  do  not  know  how  to  prove  that  a  civilized 
man  is  less  happy  than  a  savage;  in  fact,  I  do  not  know  how 


16  DARROW-KENNEDY  DEBATE. 

to  prove  which  is  the  civilized  man  and  which  is  the  savage  F 
That  question  depends  upon  your  standpoint,  like  everything 
else  in  this  world.  Of  course,  there  is  only  one  really  civilized 
man  that  I  know.  There  are  a  lot  of  them  who  think  they  are, 
but  hey  are  not. 

I  am  willing  to  accept  his  definition  of  progress.  That  is 
one  thing  we  agree  on.  I  believe  that  progress  is  purely  a  ques- 
tion of  the  pleasure  units  that  we  get  out  of  life.  The  pleas- 
ure and  pain  theory  is  the  only  correct  theory  of  morality  and 
the  only  way  to  judge  life.  Many  of  us  might  debate  for  a 
great  while  about  the  meaning  of  the  word  progress,  but  I 
think  he  has  come  closer  to  it  than  anybody  else  could  have 
got  at  it  and  I  am  going  to  accept  it  just  as  he  stated  it. 

Progress  means  how  much  fun  we  get  out  of  it.  If  the 
human  race  today  is  getting  more  fun  out  of  it  than  it  was  five 
hundred  years  ago,  then  there  has  been  progress  between  that 
time  and  this.  If  it  was  getting  more  fun  out  of  it  two  thousand 
years  ago,  than  it  was  one  thousand  years  ago,  then  there  was 
no  progress  between  the  two  thousand  years  ago  and  one 
thousand  years  ago.  If,  at  a  certain  time  it  got  more  pleasure 
and  then  something  happened  so  it  got  less,  then  there  has  not 
been  progress  between  those  two  dates.  If  there  is  a  perma- 
nent law  of  progress  it  means  we  are  forever  going  toward  a 
point  where  the  human  race  is  getting  more  and  more  pleas- 
ure out  of  life.  That  is  what  I  dispute.  I  presume  there  are 
periods  in  the  human  race  when  men  got  along  more  com- 
fortably than  at  other  periods,  but  we  are  not  always  getting 
along  more  comfortably  year  after  year  or  age  after  age.  We 
go  forward  and  we  go  backward  and  we  go  up  and  we  go 
down  and  bob  around  and  think  we  are  getting  somewhere 
and  we  are  not.  That  is  what  I  contend;  I  do  not  think  we  are 
getting  anywhere. 

I  imagine  if  some  person  stood  off  and  looked  at  the  earth 
going  at  a  terrific  rate  of  speed — I  do  not  know  how  fast,  but 
almighty  fast — he  would  say:  It  is  going  to  get  there  quick, 
isn't  it?  He  would  wait  a  year  to  find  out  how  far  it  had  gone 
only  to  learn  that  it  had  come  back  to  the  same  old  place! 
Now,  that  is  the  law  of  physics;  it  is  the  law  of  life  and  I  be- 
lieve there  is  no  possible  exception  to  it.  This  is  really  a  ques- 
tion of  science. 

I  appreciate  debating  with  my  friend  here,  because  he  has 
a  scientific  mind  and  he  does  not  take  any  dope  unless  it  is 
socialism  and,  everybody  ought  to  be  permitted  to  have  one 
dope  anyhow.  If  he  ever  gets  over  that,  I  would  sug- 
gest pessimism. 

I  am  willing  to  put  it  all  on  a  scientific  basis,  for  that  is 
where  it  belongs.  Of  course,  he  has  made  many  statements 


DARROVV's    FIRST    SPEECH.  17 

here  that  I  could  not  fully  agree  with  and  I  hardly  think  will 
stand  a  test:  That  the  world  is  happier  because  it  has  more 
food,  and  the  need  of  the  human  race  is  to  have  more  food 
and  a  greater  variety  of  food,  and  more  clothes  and  have  its 
wants  satisfied.  That  will  not  do  at  all.  You  do  not  need 
a  greater  variety  of  food  because  when  you  get  a  greater  va- 
riety you  will  want  a  still  greater  variety.  An  ordinary  man 
can  live  on  cabbage  and  corned  beef,  but  as  you  get  well  civil- 
ized you  want  nightingales'  tongues  or  something  like  that.  I 
do  not  know  that  one  gives  any  more  happiness  than  the  other. 
I  am  not  well  enough  civilized  to  know. 

As  to  clothes,  that  is  a  matter  of  habit,  too.  The  bour- 
geoisie— I  don't  think  I  got  that  pronounced  right — anyhow, 
it  is  a  socialist  word,  but  they  are  the  only  ones  that  really 
wear  plenty  of  clothes.  Primitive  man  did  not  need  them;  he 
did  not  wear  many,  if  any;  and  the  rich  people  are  beginning 
gradually  to  leave  theirs  off. 

It  is  all  a  matter  of  habit  and  a  question  of  your  standpoint. 
You  cannot  say  clothes  make  people  more  comfortable  or  less 
comfortable,  excepting  in  real  cold  weather,  and  you  cannot 
be  sure  of  it  then  because  clothes  make  you  cold  as  well  as 
warm.  Thousands  of  people  down  in  Tierra  del  Fuego  do  not 
suffer  half  as  much  as  Darwin  thought  they  did.  If  Darwin 
had  taken  off  his  clothes,  he  would  have  been  miserable.  But 
you  know  the  Bible  says  that  the  Lord  tempers  the  wind  to 
the  shorn  lamb.  That  is  not  true.  But,  he  does  temper  the 
shorn  lamb  to  the  wind.  And,  in  the  winter  time,  when  it  is 
cold,  the  shorn  lamb  is  not  shorn ;  it  is  only  in  the  spring  when 
the  sun  comes  out,  for  along  toward  winter  its  wool  gets  thick. 
So  it  is  with  the  human  race. 

These  things  have  various  origins  and  largely  they  are 
matters  of  habit.  I  do  not  believe  anybody  could  prove  that 
the  people  who  wear  clothes  are  happier  because  they  wear 
clothes  than  the  people  who  do  not  wear  clothes.  I  rather 
think  they  could  not.  I  would  not  know  how  to  do  it  even  if  I 
was  on  that  side.  There  are  a  lot  of  things  you  cannot  prove. 

For  instance,  he  tells  us  they  used  to  be  very  superstitious. 
Used  to  be?  We  have  the  same  God  the  first  savage  had, 
and  He  does  just  the  same  things,  and  we  believe  in  Him  just 
as  much.  His  method  of  action  has  taken  a  different  form, 
that  is  all.  Now,  I  suppose  there  were  half  a  million  people, 
more  or  less,  today  who  went  to  church  in  Chicago  and  at  least 
pretended  that  they  believe  in  God.  A  thoroughly  civilized 
city!  The  savages  had  something  to  look  at  that  represented 
their  god;  but  the  Chicago  people  did  not — they  just  talked 
into  the  air!  And,  we  are  civilized!  We  have  all  the  charms 
and  incantations  and  so  on. 


18  DARROW-KEXXEDY  DEBATE. 

Why,  I  went  to  a  banquet  the  other  night,  a  Victory  ban- 
quet, on  account  of  our  triumph  over  German  autocracy,  and 
some  "fool"  preacher  talked  to  God  before  we  had  a  chance 
to  talk,  and  he  thanked  God  for  ending  the  war!  The  preach- 
er did  not  think  it  funny.  I  fancy  I  was  pretty  nearly  the  only 
one  there  that  did.  Of  course,  he  did  not  thank  Him  for  start- 
ing the  thing;  just  for  stopping  it.  And,  even  as  intellectual 
and  as  radical  a  person  as  the  President  of  the  United  States 
appointed  a  day  of  prayer  to  God  to  help  beat  the  Germans. 

Still  we  talk  about  superstition!  We  still  pray  for  rain — 
that  is  I  do  not — but  we  do.  Savages  could  not  beat  that, 
could  they?  Governors  appoint  days  to  pray  for  rain,  and 
then  if  the  rain  does  not  come  they  say  that  God  knew  better 
than  they  when  it  ought  to  come.  We  have  a  rapidly  growing 
school  of  medicine  the  Christian  Scientists  I  suppose,  who  be- 
lieve more  or  less  that  the  diety  has  to  do  with  the  state  of 
health,  and  I  think  He  does.  I  rather  think  that  anybody  who 
believes  that  way  is  a  cheerful  idiot  and  will  live  a  long  while. 
We  still  pray  for  people  who  are  sick.  Lots  of  people  pray  for 
them,  and  then  they  die,  they  keep  on  praying  for  others. 

When  the  war  began,  everybody  got  religion  so  God  would 
keep  the  bullets  away  from  them.  Some  of  them  got  over  it 
when  they  found  it  did  not  keep  them  off.  That  is  in  a  civil- 
ized country  and  a  civilized  world.  I  cannot  see  that  there  s 
any  great  change  in  that;  I  cannot  see  that  there  is  any  change 
in  the  human  mind  whether  you  believe  in  forty  gods  or  one. 
One  god  comes  as  a  sort  of  a  trust  evolution,  that's  all.  One 
can  do  it,  so  we  consolidate  the  business.  The  idea  is  exactly 
the  same,  it  is  a  superstition,  and  yet  everybody — almost 
everybody,  at  least — professes  to  believe  it,  and  I  fancy  some 
of  them  really  do. 

Now,  another  thing.  I  don't  know  that  the  fact  that  a  man 
knows  something  about  science  makes  any  one  happier.  That 
is  the  worst  of  all  of  that.  Now,  I  will  agree  with  Professor 
Kennedy  that  real  learning,  real  learning,  means  acquaintance 
with  the  laws  of  Nature,  or,  speaking  broadly,  science.  Begin- 
ning with  Aristotle,  and  coming  on  down  through  to  Bacon 
and  the  English  school  of  philosophers  to  the  present  day — 
and  we  will  "cut  out"  the  idealism  of  Plato,  Mary  Baker  Eddy 
and  that  line — I  do  not  know  that  science  gives  you  anything 
so  far  as  happiness  goes.  I  enjoy  biology  and  for  me,  it  is 
some  fun.  I  do  not  think  it  adds  to  my  length  of  life.  But, 
I  as  one  person  get  an  individual  gratification  out  of  it,  just  as 
some  other  fellow  does  out  of  playing  checkers,  or  some  wom- 
en do  out  of  whist  and  others  out  of  sewing  societies  and  war 
work. 

Now,  what  is  the  difference?  I  cannot  say  that  I,  who 
study  biology,  am  happier  than  the  other  fellow  who  plays 


HARROWS    FIRST    SPEECH.  1!) 

checkers.  I  rather  think  I  am  not.  It  might  possibly  be  I  am 
more  intellectual;  but  nobody  can  prove  that  intellectuality 
makes  you  happy;  in  fact,  I  think  it  does  not.  I  am  inclined  to 
think  1  am  a  little  too  intellectual  to  be  happy.  I  have  kind  of 
gone  "over  the  top",  really!  I  wish  there  was  some  way  I 
could  slow  down  so  I  would  be  like  the  other  people,  but  there 
is  not. 

This  art  business — well,  I  don't  know  that  studying  art 
makes  you  happy.  I  never  could  see  that  an  artist  was  any 
happier  than  a  mechanic.  I  think  he  is  not.  I  am  more  or  less 
of  an  artist  in  some  directions  but  that  does  not  make  me 
happy,  and  if  it  did  it  would  not  make  some  other  person 
happy.  You  cannot  say  that  if  you  would  make  all  men  artists 
this  would  be  a  happier  world.  You  would  probably  all  of 
you  have  indigestion.  The  truth  is  you  cannot  live  on  intel- 
lect. Why,  a  good  stomach  is  worth  forty  brains  for  life.  At 
the  time  the  human  race  gets  a  brain  as  tall  as  a  stove-pipe  hat. 
there  will  be  nothing  left  of  it  and  it  cannot  live.  We  have  all 
the  time  to  keep  down  to  the  sources  of  life,  and  Nature  will 
not  let  us  get  away.  If  we  do,  she  keeps  pulling  us  back.  It 
is  perfectly  evident  to  me  that  intellectuality  does  not  bring 
happines. 

Then,  to  come  back  to  the  savage.  Well  now,  I  do  not 
know.  The  savage  had  a  pretty  good  time  anyway,  and  sur- 
vived. That  is  one  way  of  telling.  He  survived  longer  than 
the  civilized  man  has.  I  think  there  is  very  much  more  chance 
for  the  civilized  man  to  go  back  to  savagery  than  for  the  sav- 
age man  to  come  to  civilization.  I  do  not  know  why,  but  I 
will  elaborate  a  little  bit  more  on  that  after  a  while.  He  sur- 
vived. He  was  comfortable  and  warm  in  the  summer  time 
and  the  Lord  tempered  him  up  so  that  he  could  stand  the  win- 
ter, so  he  got  along  all  right.  Of  course,  he  had  his  bad  days; 
so  do  we.  He  did  not  have  much  toothache  probably  because 
he  used  his  teeth  more.  He  did  not  cook  his  food.  He  prob- 
ably did  not  have  dyspepsia.  When  he  died,  he  died  a  sud- 
den death  and  got  through  with  it.  Even  his  cannibalism  was 
not  so  bad.  Of  course  this  was  largely  a  religious  rite.  To 
have  all  his  wives  have  a  row  after  his  death  is  not  so  much; 
a  civilized  man  would  have  them  rowing  when  he  was  living. 

Really,  is  there  any  way  to  tell?  We  just  assume  these 
things,  you  know.  Now,  if  a  savage  wrote  books,  he  would 
tell  how  much  better  off  they  were  than  we  civilized  people 
are.  If  the  mosquitoes  wrote  them  they  would  tell;  if  the  flies 
wrote  them,  they  would  tell  us  how  all  these  fool  people  waste 
their  time  preparing  food  for  them  to  eat.  We  only  see  the 
world  from  the  standpoint  of  civilized  human  beings,  or  semi- 
civilized,  whatever  it  is,  and  we  cannot  judge  the  other  fellow's 


20  DARROW-KENNEDY  DEBATE. 

pleasures  or  his  pains;  but  I  fancy  that  the  savage  had  some  ad- 
vantages over  us,  and  I  don't  care  to  emphasize  this  for  the 
sake  of  making  this  side  seem  stronger  than  it  really  is:  The 
relative  pleasures  of  the  savage  and  the  civilized  man  are  fair 
subjects  for  discussion  and  are  worth  thinking  about,  and  it  is 
of  no  importance  to  me  which  side  you  take.  I  don't  know 
which  side  I  am  on.  All  I  can  say  is  people  assume  too  much 
entirely.  Now,  even  though  I  may  have  been  descended  from 
an  ape,  still,  my  children  might  be — well,  Methodists.  I  know 
which  side  I  am  on  as  to  the  permanent  progress.  But  as  to 
whether  the  savage  or  civilized  man  is  better  off,  you  can  say 
things  in  favor  of  each  of  them.  One  thing  is  pretty  sure  to 
me — that  the  savage's  mind  never  bothered  him  a  great  deal. 
Another  thing  that  is  sure  to  me  is  that  the  civilized  man's 
mind  bothers  him  more  than  his  body. 

I  have  had  a  lot  of  ills  in  my  day.  The  most  of  them  were 
in  my  mind,  and  I  am  not  a  Christian  Scientist,  either.  But,  it 
is  true.  The  more  intellgent  you  are,  the  more  trouble  you 
get  out  of  it — disease  and  parting  with  friends  and  disasters, 
some  of  which  never  come  and  some  of  which  do  come.  All 
these  things  are  the  heritage  of  brain  power.  I  honestly  think, 
if  I  were  born  again — which  God  forbid — I  would  ask  to  be 
made  a  shade  less  intelligent.  I  believe  that  the  present  trou- 
bles of  most  of  us  are  more  intellectual  than  physical. 

Suppose  we  could  live  right  along,  getting  careless  and 
thoughtless,  like  the  other  animals,  never  thinking  and  wor- 
rying about  it  and  just  living.  Today  it  is  cold  and  we  are 
just  a  bit  uncomfortable;  tomorrow  the  sun  is  shining  and  we 
warm  up.  Today  we  are  just  a  little  bit  hungry,  but  we  can 
run  around  better  for  that.  The  next  day  a  dead  whale  comes 
in  and  we  live  on  blubber  for  a  week!  Now,  what  is  the  mat- 
ter with  that  life?  I  don't  know  what  is  the  matter  with  that 
life!  Of  course  you  haven't  many  clothes;  but  you  don't  need 
them.  You  don't  need  to  even  have  a  watch  to  know  what 
time  it  is;  you  just  go  along.  I  don't  think  that  the  man  who 
seeks  to  civilize  and  even  Christianize  the  savages  s  doing  any 
great  good  to  them,  and  the  man  probably  hmself  is  not  in- 
telligent enough  even  to  get  any  good  out  of  it.  Nature,  I 
rather  think,  is  on  their  side.  Let  us  see  whether  it  is.  I  want 
to  get  down  to  the  science  and  philosophy  of  this  thing, 
before  I  get  through,  because  I  am  long  on  science  and  phi- 
losophy, to  give  you  something  to  think  about.  There  are  two 
sides  to  all  things. 

The  animal  has  persisted  down  through  all  time.  Of 
course,  not  always  the  same  animal,  but  Nature  has  let  him 
live.  While  he  lived  a  fairly  vagrant  life,  sometimes  having 
food  and  sometimes  not,  he  survived.  The  savage  has  sur- 


DARROW'S    FIRST   SPEECH.  21 

vived,  so  far  as  we  can  tell — of  course  we  guess  a  good  deal 
upon  these  things.  I  want  to  call  attention  to  guessing  as  we 
go  along,  because  a  great  deal  of  all  of  this,  in  the  long  sweep 
of  time,  is  more  or  less  guesswork.  The  chances  are  that  the 
savage  has  survived  ever  since  man  has  been  on  earth,  which 
is  perhaps,  some  two  hundred  thousand  years  at  least;  maybe 
a  little  longer;  I  haven't  the  time  to  figure  it  up,  and  he  stayed 
there.  The  civilized  man  has  not  been  here  long  enough  to 
know  whether  clothes  did  him  any  good  or  not.  Of  course, 
he  could  not  get  along  with  civilization  without  clothes,  but  he 
might  get  along  without  civilzaton  and  clothes.  We  can  tell 
somethng  about  it,  though,  just  a  little  about  it,  and  I  want  to 
put  this  on  the  side  of  the  things  we  do  know:  Is  there  a  law 
of  progress  or  is  civilization  moving  forward  permanently? 
Whatever  way  or  however  way  you  want  to  put  it:  Is  there 
something  inherent  in  life  and  Nature  which  means  that  the 
human  race  is  happier  today  than  it  was  yesterday,  and  it  will 
be  happier  a  thousand  years  from  now  than  it  is  today,  and  a 
hundred  thousand  years  from  now  than  it  it  today?  That  is 
the  question. 

Of  course,  my  friend  has  glorious  hope  for  the  human  race 
a  thousand  years  from  now,  for  then  we  will  have  socialism! 
Well,  I  don't  know;  maybe  we  will.  I  never  shall  know.  That 
is  the  difference  between  him  and  me.  I  know  that  the  human 
race  has  had  it  in  more  or  less  different  phases,  and  I  would 
be  glad  to  see  it  tried  over  because  change  is  a  good  thing  any- 
way; you  get  tired  of  the  same  kind  of  thing  over  and  over;  at 
least  some  of  us  do.  But,  the  human  race  has  had  it.  Bees 
have  had  it  ever  since  there  were  bees.  I  suppose  animals  are 
higher  than  bees.  There  isn't  anything  in  this  that  brings  hap- 
piness that  I  know  about.  And  then  you  cannot  measure  it 
up.  Is  there  a  permanent  law?  I  think  that  is  easily  settled. 

As  a  matter  of  science  and  of  philosophy,  is  there  some- 
thing in  the  universe  which  in  and  of  itself  means  that  the 
world  will  always  be  getting  happier?  That  is  purely  a  reli- 
gious doctrine.  It  can  rest  upon  nothing  excepting  religion. 
My  friend  and  I,  neither  of  us  being  orthodox,  of  course,  we 
cannot  take  it  from  that  angle.  As  a  religious  doctrine  it  rests 
with  the  orthodox,  first,  on  the  assumption  that  there  is  a  God. 
and,  secondly,  that  he  is  good.  Well,  you  have  to  prove  both 
of  them  to  me.  Every  fact  in  life  and  science  is  against  both, 
and  there  is  no  use  talking  about  them.  Scientific  men  do  not 
talk  about  it  any  more  than  they  talk  about  hobgoblins. 

Now,  suppose  you  do  not  believe  in  it,  then  progress  rests 
upon  another  religious  dogma,  which  in  some  way  is  hitched 
up  to  science:  That  the  law  of  evolution  is  beneficient;  that 
the  world  is  changing  and  there  is  something  inherent  in  the 


22  DARROW-KEXXEDY   DEBATE. 

law  of  evolution  which  takes  the  human  race  higher  and  higher 
and  makes  it  happier.  Why?  Why  should  you  not  say  that 
the  law  of  evolution  is  demoniac;  that  it  carries  us  lower?  It 
is  a  pure  matter  of  faith  that  it  takes  us  higher  and  higher. 
Faith,  a  religious  faith,  whether  the  religion  is  God  or  evolu- 
tion, it  does  not  make  a  particle  of  difference;  you  get  back  to 
the  same  thing. 

Are  you  going  to  base  it  on  facts?  I  take  a  telescope  and 
look  out  into  the  heavens.  I  find  a  countless  number  of  worlds 
that  are  dead,  have  been  burned  to  cinders  that  were  once 
worlds  like  ours.  I  find  others  that  are  in  the  forming;  others 
like  ours  that  seem  plainly  to  have  passed  their  highest  stage 
and  the  deserts  appear  and  they  seem  to  be  going  toward  the 
sunset.  Worlds  are  found  in  their  birth;  in  every  stage;  life 
and  death  are  there  as  they  are  everywhere  and  there  is  no 
chance  for  any  permanence. 

Turn  to  the  race.  Civilization,  as  we  call  it,  is  not  very 
old;  perhaps  some  vestage  of  civilization  for  five  or  six  thou- 
sand years.  And  yet  nations  have  risen  and  flourished  and  de- 
cayed. We  have  had  the  civilization  of  Persia;  of  Arabia;  of 
Egypt;  of  Mesopotamia;  and  through  all  these  places  there 
are  desert  wastes  where  the  owl  hoots  at  night,  and  where 
beasts  pursue  their  prey  in  those  spots  which  once  were  fertile 
lands  and  where  once  lived  civilized  people,  so-called.  They 
were  born,  and  they  lived,  and  they  died.  The  everlasting 
cycle  of  the  earth  going  around  the  sun;  the  everlasting  law  of 
change,  that  is  not  the  law  of  progress,  but  simply  a  law  of 
change  and  nothing  more.  There  is  no  chance  to  prove  any- 
thing more.  The  savage  looked  at  the  rising  tide  and  thought 
it  would  rise  forever;  but  it  went  back  again;  it  goes  back  just 
as  it  rises.  It  changes  as  the  seasons  change.  An  everlasting 
change,  that  is  all  there  is  to  it. 

Let  us  see  about  individuals.  The  greatest  civilization, 
perhaps,  this  world  ever  saw  was  in  Greece.  They  did  not 
know  as  much  biology  in  those  days  as  even  I  know.  But, 
what  of  it?  They  were  more  civilized.  They  could  not  put  up  a 
building  as  high  as  we  can  build  them  in  Chicago.  That  old 
civilization  is  almost  in  ruins.  The  civilization  of  India  is 
in  ruins.  Some  of  Rome  and  Greece  is  in  ruins.  And,  the 
civilization  of  Chicago  would  not  make  a  decent  ruin!  Why, 
Gallon  says  that  the  common  people  of  Greece  were  more 
intelligent  than  the  members  of  Parliament  fiftv  years  ago! 
Of  course  they  did  not  have  to  be  very  intelligent  to  be 
that,  but  it  was  a  long  while  ago.  I  think  they  would  average 
up  with  our  City  Council,  barring  my  friend  Kennedy,  would 
they  not? 

Now,  here  was  Plato,  who  was  a  pretty  clever  man  for  his 
age  and  generation.  His  lineal  descendant  is  Mary  Baker  G. 


KENNEDY'S  SECOND  SPEECH.  23 

Eddy.  There  is  very  much  in  common  between  the  two  phi- 
losophies. So  far  as  I  can  understand,  Christian  Scientists  get 
their  inspiration  from  Mrs.  Eddy,  whose  words  seem  unintelli- 
gible so  far  as  they  go.  If  one  wants  to  study  that  Philosophy. 
I  would  advise  them  not  to  read  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy,  but  to 
read  Plato.  Plato  was  the  bigger  man.  Socrates  was  a  great 
philosopher.  1  could  stand  here  the  rest  of  the  afternoon  and 
mention  the  great  Greeks.  The  world  has  never  had  such  a 
galaxy  since. 

The  world  passed  from  Greek  philosophy  to  the  Roman 
period.  From  Roman  strength  and  power  and  civilization  to 
the  darkness  of  midnight,  and  for  centuries  the  dark  ages  set- 
tled down  over  the  earth.  Those  are  the  ones  my  brother  here 
read  about  when  he  read  about  witchcraft,  which  we  still  be- 
lieve in.  For  centuries  this  world  was  dark,  after  the  illustrious 
days  of  Greece  and  Rome.  Was  it  going  backward  or  for- 
ward? There  is  no  question  where  it  went.  It  went  back.  I 
fancy  for  some  centuries  it  has  been  going  upward,  and  I  have 
just  a  hunch  that  today  it  is  going  down.  That  is  not  because 
I  am  a  pessimist;  it  is  because  I  see  today  that  the  spirit  of  hu- 
man freedom  has  vanished  from  the  peoples  of  this  world — 
especially  from  America!  We  have  forgotten  it.  We  care 
nothing  about.  If  we  can  make  money  by  compelling  people 
to  do  certain  things  by  law,  or  if  some  fool  reformers  think 
they  can  save  the  souls  of  men  by  passing  laws,  we  say:  let 
them  do  it.  We  would  not  fight  for  liberty  today;  we  have 
forgotten  it.  I  fancy  today  it  is  going  back;  perhaps  not,  but 
that  is  my  feeling.  But  human  life  and  all  life  is  like  the  waves 
of  the  sea;  it  is  tossed  about;  it  is  up  and  down;  it  is  in  and 
out — the  law  of  change  is  everywhere,  but  that  there  is  a  law 
of  progress  is  a  matter  of  pure,  unadulterated,  religious  faith! 

MR.  KENNEDY'S  SECOND  SPEECH. 

Mr.  Kennedy  said:  When  we  attempt  to  judge  whether 
or  not  human  beings  are  more  or  less  happy,  it  is  very  diffi- 
cult of  couse  to  get  a  standard  by  which  we  can  register  an 
accurate  judgment.  Happiness  is  a  subjective  matter.  You 
cannot  tell  exactly  from  looking  at  a  person  whether  he  is 
happy  or  not.  You  cannot  tell  by  reading  about  a  certain 
place  or  civilization  whether  those  people  were  happy  or  not. 
So,  when  Mr.  Darow  says  that  perhaps  if  the  savages  were 
considering  our  civilization,  they  would  say  they  were  a  whole 
lot  happier  under  savagery  than  here,  perhaps  he  is  right. 
But,  really,  that  has  no  bearing  on  the  debate. 

We  are  not  interested  in  what  savages  think  about  our 
civilization.  We  are  doing  the  judging  ourselves.  It  is  up 
to  us  to  decide  whether  we  think  our  civilization  better  than 


24  DARROVV-KENNEDY   DEBATE. 

savagery.  If  we  do,  we  want  to  keep  it  and  improve  it.  If 
we  do  not,  we  can  get  back  to  savagery  pretty  fast!  It  is  a 
whole  lot  easier  to  drop  from  civilization  to  savagery  than  to 
come  from  savagery  to  civilization!  If  we  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  we  do  not  like  to  have  three  meals  a  day,  it  is 
very  easy  to  go  without,  isn't  it?  I  do  not  need  to  argue 
about  that. 

Brother  Darrow  says  food  and  variety  of  food  is  not  es- 
sential to  happiness.  All  right,  let  us  do  without.  You  can 
soon  settle  which  way  you  will  be  happier — with  or  without 
food!  That  is  not  a  matter  of  opinion.  You  can  decide  that 
for  yourselves.  I  want  the  food,  and  I  think  if  it  comes  to 
where  it  is  put  to  a  real  test,  we  will  get  a  decision  of  ninety- 
nine  per  cent,  who  will  take  the  meals — take  the  variety.  In 
fact,  isn't  that  what  most  people  are  struggling  for?  To  get 
enough  food  and  good  food  to  nourish  themselves  and  to  be 
sure  of  it?  Enough  clothing  and  good  clothing,  to  clothe 
themselves,  and  be  sure  of  it,  not  only  today,  but  tomorrow, 
and  a  decent  home  to  like  in.  Why  are  they  going  thru  all 
these  strenuous  activities?  I  name  these  because  they  are 
some  of  the  things  we  are  needing  in  life.  I  am  very  sus- 
picious of  these  highly  intellectual  people  who  have  a  con- 
tempt for  food,  clothing  and  shelter  as  non-essential. 

So,  just  looking  at  things  from  the  standpoint  of  how 
people  actually  do  act  and  think,  I  have  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  most  folks  would  be  a  whole  lot  happier  when  that 
economic  problem  is  solved  than  when  it  is  not  solved.  You 
can  settle  it  for  yourself,  but  that  is  just  my  belief  and  it  may 
be  a  religious  belief!  In  fact,  that  is  one  of  the  main  points 
in  my  religion — get  plenty  of  food,  clothing  and  shelter 
which  are  the  necessities  of  life,  for  everybody. 

Let  us  go  a  step  further  from  the  physical  necessities  to  the 
intellectual  situation.  Brother  Darrow  says  that  since  there 
were  five  hundred  thousand  went  to  church  here  in  Chicago 
today,  what  is  the  use  of  talking  about  superstition  dying  out. 
Well,  there  is  just  this  difference  between  things  as  they  are 
today  and  things  as  they  would  have  been  under  savagery. 
We  are  holding  this  meeting  here  today  too.  It  could  not 
have  been  held  under  savagery  or  during  the  middle  ages. 
They  would  have  strung  us  all  up  or  burned  us  at  the  stake 
because  we  think  differently  from  the  majority.  That  is  the 
history  of  the  superstition  and  persecution  which  we  are  out- 
growing in  a  measure. 

Men  like  Darrow,  Lewis  and  I  can  think  our  own  thoughts, 
say  something  about  them  once  in  a  while  without  being 
burned  at  the  stage.  That  is  some  advantage.  It  is  true  there 
are  a  great  many  people  who  do  not  agree  with  us,  but  as 


KENNEDY'S  SECOND  SPEECH.  25 

long  as  we  have  the  opportunity  to  discuss  our  ideas,  and  to 
say  what  we  think  about  reactionary  and  superstitious  prac- 
tices, I  believe  that  more  and  more  people  will  come  to  look 
at  things  from  the  scientific  rather  than  the  theological  stand- 
point. That  is  another  point  in  my  religion:  I  believe  we  are 
going  to  outgrow  the  superstitious  period  in  the  history  of  the 
human  race.  My  belief  is  science  will  kill  superstition.  I  rea- 
lize that  at  times  due  to  social  conditions,  science  is  given  a 
set-back ;  but,  as  you  look  back,  over  the  history  of  the  human 
race,  you  will  see  it  has  gone  forward,  and  superstition  has 
gone  backward;  and  just  in  proportion  as  science  has  gone 
forward,  we  have  a  greater  degree  of  human  freedom. 

Then  again,  we  are  reminded  of  the  fact  that  the  Greeks 
had  a  great  civilization.  We  are  told  that  we  have  not  made 
any  advance  over  their  civilization,  so  where  is  our  progress? 
Fundamentally,  the  Greek  civilization  was  not  great.  There 
was  a  census  taken  in  Athens  309  B.  C.  which  showed 
twenty-one  thousand  free  citizens;  ten  thousand  foreigners 
and  four  hundred  thousand  slaves.  I  cannot  glorify  that  kind 
of  a  civilization.  It  is  true  they  had  their  sculptors  and  their 
architects  and  their  philosophers  and  others  who  made  con- 
tributions to  human  thought  and  human  advancement;  but, 
taking  the  civilization  as  a  whole,  it  did  not  compare  with 
modern  civilization,  for  the  reason  that  for  the  mass  of  the 
people  there  was  nothing  like  the  same  degree  of  security, 
freedom  and  liberty  that  we  have  today.  Of  course,  I  know 
that  the  wage  system  is  not  perfect,  but  it  is  an  advance  over 
chattel  slavery.  There  again,  I  leave  it  to  your  own  common 
sense.  If  you  had  your  choice  to  settle  here  this  afternoon, 
whether  you  would  rather  be  a  chattel  slave,  owned  by  some- 
body else  or  a  wage  worker,  as  you  probably  are,  which 
would  you  choose?  Would  you  prefer  to  be  owned  as  a  chat- 
tel and  sold  on  the  block  rather  than  a  wage-earner  as  you  are 
today?  I  do  believe  that  the  wage-system,  even  with  its 
unemployment,  and  injustice,  is  superior  to  chattel  slavery. 
I  do  not  believe  in  befuddling  my  mind  to  the  extent  of  say- 
ing that  chattel  slavery  is  better  than  the  wage  system,  as  some 
people  do,  for  purposes  of  discussion.  But,  if  they  were  put 
up  against  it  personally,  they  would  say:  I  will  take  the  wage 
system  every  time. 

In  Greece  they  had  a  chattel  slave  system,  four  hundred 
thousand  of  them  as  against  twenty-one  thousand  free  citi- 
zens. So,  when  you  get  down  to  the  fundamentals  of  their 
civilization,  it  was  not  on  a  par  with  our  modern  civilization. 

Brother  Darrow  is  worrying  a  lot  lest  the  spirit  of  human 
freedom  is  dead.  I  wish  he  could  be  in  Russia  for  a  while 
now;  it  would  do  him  good!  He  will  differ  with  me  on  this  I 


26  DARROW-KEXXEDY  DEBATE. 

know,  but  I  believe  his  ideas  about  Russia  are  about  the  same 
ideas  in  the  main  that  the  newspaper  men  have  about  Russia. 
I  do  not  say  that  in  any  sense  of  criticism  at  all.  What  I  mean 
by  it  is  that  most  of  us  here  in  this  country  do  not  know  the 
real  truth  about  Russia.  I  think  if  we  were  there  and  saw  the 
actual  spirit  prevailing  among  those  millions  of  Russians,  we 
would  say  that  the  spirit  of  freedom  is  not  dead!  I  believe 
the  torch  of  liberty  is  burning  very  brightly  and  fiercely  among 
the  millions  and  millions  in  Russia  today  and  more  than  it 
ever  did  before  in  the  history  of  the  human  race.  That  is 
largely  a  matter  of  belief.  As  I  say,  we  have  not  got  the 
facts;  it  is  unfortunate.  If  I  can  get  to  Russia  within  the  next 
year  or  so,  I  am  going  to  try  to  get  some  of  the  facts  for 
myself. 

I  believe  it  to  that  extent.  1  believe  in  other  countries 
in  Europe  the  same  spirit  of  liberty  is  manifest.  I  should  not 
be  surprised  if  you  would  see  something  interesting  happen 
in  England  this  week!  You  certainly  will  if  the  government 
does  not  get  off  the  lid  and  grant  some  more  great  conces- 
sions to  the  railroad  workers,  to  the  dockers  and  mine  work- 
ers, giving  them  some  more  leisure  and  the  worth  while  things 
in  life  that  these  people  are  after.  You  will  find  that  the  spirit 
of  liberty  is  not  dead  in  England,  either.  There  is  going  to  be 
a  revolution  in  England  just  as  sure  as  fate.  So,  too,  the  peo- 
ple who  think  the  spirit  of  liberty  is  dead  in  this  country  sim- 
ply need  to  wait  a  little  while.  Things  will  pick  up  over  here! 
I  am  not  worrying  about  the  ultimate  outcome.  The  people 
in  this  country  just  need  to  be  worked  up  a  little  bit.  They 
do  not  realize  just  exactly  what  is  going  on.  They  will  in 
the  course  of  a  few  years;  it  may  take  five,  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  years.  But,  what  is  that  in  the  history  of  civilization? 
The  real  economic  conditions  are  here  for  a  great  civilization. 
It  is  not  a  religious  proposition  that  underlies  my  faith.  It  is 
an  economic  proposition.  It  is  the  development  of  the  work- 
ers in  the  economic  struggle,  the  development  of  the  indus- 
trial organization.  We  can  see  real  progress,  step  by  step 
whereby  we  can  in  a  larger  measure  rule  our  destiny.  My 
faith  is  not  simply  out  of  the  skies  or  what  I  have  read  in  a 
book,  but  it  is  based  upon  what  we  can  witness  in  the  actual 
development  of  our  economic  and  social  order. 

If  that  evolution  had  not  taken  place;  if  I  could  not  see 
the  difference  between  the  earlier  and  the  later  stages,  with 
mankind  steadily  moving  forward,  and  see  the  progress  from 
the  beast  of  burden  and  the  cart,  up  to  the  railroad  and  the 
automobile  and  the  aeroplane — I  might  not  be  so  optimistic. 
It  is  not  a  matter  of  theory  but  of  fact,  the  conquest  of  the 
forces  of  Nature,  the  freeing  of  mankind  in  a  very  real  sense 


KENNEDYS    SECOND    SPEECH.  ffl 

which  makes  it  possible  for  you  to  be  here  today  and,  if  you 
have  a  little  money,  in  California  tomorrow.  It  is  essential 
to  have  that  little  money.  That  is  the  reason  we  want  to 
change  the  social  order.  The  fact  we  have  the  automobiles, 
railroads, — have  harnessed  the  powers  of  electricity, — use 
steamships  instead  of  dug-outs,  are  fundamental  and  essen- 
tial to  the  real  civilization. 

And,  those  conditions  never  existed  before  in  the  history 
of  the  human  race.  It  is  a  fact,  not  a  dream.  The  economic 
foundations  for  a  high  civilization  for  millions  of  people  never 
existed  before  the  modern  era.  It  may  be  that  a  few  individ- 
uals could  get  along  very  well,  but  the  masses  could  not  un- 
der the  old  social  conditions.  This  is  the  first  time  that  we 
ever  had  the  economic  foundations  for  a  high  civilization.  The 
queston  remains:  Is  it  possible  to  pass  on  our  technical  and 
scientific  and  social  achievements?  Can  we  do  it  by  means 
of  universities,  by  means  of  industrial  museums;  by  means  of 
literature;  by  means  of  word  of  mouth;  by  means  of  meetings 
like  this?  Can  we  pass  on  the  achievements  of  the  past  and 
present  to  the  future  generations?  That  is  the  real  question. 
I  believe  we  can  and  we  will  do  it.  I  believe  the  printing 
press,  the  library  and  university  are  going  to  be  the  means 
whereby  we  pass  on  what  has  been  achieved  in  the  past,  and 
I  am  fully  aware  of  the  conditions  in  the  universities  today, 
too.  When  I  say  the  university  will  be  the  means,  I  am  aware 
that  we  will  have  to  get  rid  of  some  of  the  present  boards  of 
trustees,  to  be  sure.  We  will  do  that.  And,  if  we  cannot  do 
that,  we  can  build  up  some  of  our  own  universities  in  place 
of  the  other  universities. 

Brother  Lewis  talked  about  a  publishing  society.  Truly, 
you  are  a  publishing  society,  and  what  is  there  to  stop  your 
development?  Here  is  an  organization  of  men  and  women 
who  come  together  for  mutual  advancement  and  develop- 
ment. What  is  to  prevent  this  organization  from  growing; 
this  is  like  one  of  the  old  time  universities,  where  the  people 
came  in  flocks  and  met  in  the  groves  not  in  class-rooms,  but 
in  vast  numbers  and  considered  questions  of  vast  interest  and 
importance  to  the  people.  You  truly  have  a  university  right 
here,  and  it  is  going  to  facilitate  the  passing  on  of  such  science 
as  already  has  been  attained. 

With  such  institutions  developing  and  growing  all  over 
the  world,  I  cannot  see  how  we  are  going  to  lose  the  liberty 
we  have.  I  cannot  see  that  the  world  is  going  backward.  I 
can  see  that  we  are  making  wonderful  progress  and  that  we 
are  organizing  in  a  way  that  is  going  to  make  it  possible  to 
bring  home  to  all  the  people  the  advantages  now  enjoyed  by 
only  a  few  of  the  people. 


28  DARROW-KEXXEDY  DEBATE. 

That  is  the  reason  I  am  a  Socialist.  That  is  the  reason  I 
stand  for  the  socialist  program,  because,  to  my  mind,  it  is  the 
next  necessary  step  in  the  line  of  human  development;  it  is 
the  necessary  program  for  placing  the  achievements  of  all 
humanity  in  the  possession  of  all  the  people.  That  is  the  im- 
portant thing. 

Now,  just  to  say  it  never  has  been  done  does  not  bother 
me  any.  Lots  of  things  that  were  never  done  before  are  done 
now.  Remember  the  countryman  who  said  to  the  engineer, 
when  he  saw  the  first  locomotive:  "You  will  never  get  the 
darn  thing  started".  And,  then  as  the  locomotive  rolled  off 
he  turned  to  him  and  said:  "You  will  never  get  the  darn  thing 
stopped". 

That  is  very  much  the  position  our  friend  Darrow  takes. 
If  you  do  get  it  you  can  not  keep  it,  and  even  if  you  are  happy 
you  will  never  be  satisfied,  and  whatever  progress  you  get  will 
not  be  progress  after  all.  Well,  I  believe  that  it  makes  Brother 
Darrow  happy  to  think  that  way.  He  gets  the  pleasure  out 
of  his  pessimism  that  the  rest  of  us  get  out  of  our  optimism. 

But,  to  get  back  to  what  I  believe  to  be  the  fundamental 
and  essential  key  to  the  whole  situation.  The  question  of  the 
higher  civilization  rests  on  that  proposition  of  the  technique 
to  control  the  forces  of  Nature;  that  is  fundamental,  and  as 
that  advances,  your  civilization  advances;  if  that  goes  down, 
your  civilization  goes  down.  You  can  satisfy  yourself,  if  you 
will  make  the  investigation  that  there  has  been  great  advance 
in  the  past.  If  you  will  look  over  the  various  institutions  and 
agencies  for  perpetuating  and  advancing  the  achievements 
that  have  been  made,  I  think  you  will  be  satisfied  that  there 
is  a  promising  future  for  the  human  race. 

The  Chairman :  Our  friend  Kennedy  has  suggested  that 
should  be  his  last  speech  and  the  closing  of  the  debate  be 
left  to  Mr.  Darrow.  I  will  now  call  upon  Mr.  Darrow. 

MR.  DARROW'S  LAST  SPEECH. 

Mr.  Darrow  said :  I  do  not  see  any  need  of  taking  any 
of  your  time  in  closing  this  debate.  I  trust  you  have  all  had 
something  to  think  about  from  both  of  us  on  this  anyhow. 

Mr.  Kennedy  does  not  quote  me  quite  right  in  saying  the 
machine  will  not  start  or  start.  I  believe  it  will  start  and  I 
believe  it  will  stop.  Then  it  will  start  again  and  speed  up 
and  slow  down  and  stop  and  start  again  and  stop,  world  with- 
out end — Amen! 

Now,  I  do  not  want  to  be  put  in  a  wrong  attitude  about 
Russia.  I  am  really  very  strong  for  Russia.  And,  I  want  to 
see  Mr.  Lenine  and  Mr.  Trotsky  succeed.  My  difference  with 


DARROW'S    LAST    SPEECH.  29 

some  of  you  came  over  the  question  of  whether  allied  armies 
should  be  sent  to  Russia  in  times  of  war  with  Germany,  and 
I  think  they  should.  But,  when  war  is  over,  Russia  ought  to 
be  left  to  work  out  her  own  destiny,  and  I  hope  it  will  be 
good  and  I  hope  it  will  be  free.  I  want  to  call  your  attention 
to  one  or  two  things,  though,  "so  you  will  not  get  too  much 
proud  flesh,"  as  Weber  &  Field  say.  I  have  read  Mr.  Lenine's 
address  to  the  workers  of  America  and,  of  course,  he  says 
largely  that  they  have  abolished  freedom  in  Russia  and  they 
had  to  do  it.  Very  likely  they  had  to.  I  do  not  want  you  to 
think  they  are  any  better  than  the  rest.  They  are  not.  Per- 
haps they  may  work  out  toward  a  higher  civilization,  but  they 
are  using  exactly  the  same  tools  as  the  rest.  The  proletariat 
— if  that  is  the  right  word — can  shout,  but  the  bourgeois  has 
to  keep  his  mouth  shut.  They  have  just  stood  the  thing  on 
its  head.  Well,  I  do  not  object  to  that.  If  it  can  stand  on  its 
head,  all  right,  and  maybe  that  is  the  right  end  of  it!  I  fancy 
though  it  will  not  last;  now,  you  know  Nature  is  a  funny  old 
thing.  It  has  no  intelligence;  it  has  no  unintelligence;  it  has 
no  anything.  It  is  just  busy,  that  is  all. 

Why,  if  I  had  been  called  on  to  fix  this  thing  in  the  be- 
ginning. I  would  have  had  it  right.  But,  Nature  went  at  it 
like  a  blind,  stupid,  fool  mechanic  that  knew  nothing  about 
his  business.  But,  Nature  is  the  boss,  that  is  the  trouble.  I 
do  not  ask  you  to  study  Nature;  and  I  don't  suppose  Kennedy 
does;  because  Nature  knows  anything.  She  knows  nothing. 
But  you  have  got  to  obey  her.  She  is  the  boss  and  you  would 
better  study  to  find  out  how  she  is  going  so  you  can  go  along 
with  her,  that  is  all.  Now,  Nature  does  not  reason  or  think. 
She  just  acts.  And,  I  fancy  that  the  intellectuals  of  Russia, 
if  they  are  intellectuals,  and  many  of  them  are,  although  prob- 
ably not  all  of  them, — many  of  them  are — I  fancy  they  can 
not  make  an  intellectual,  patented,  ready-made  scheme  and 
put  it  down  on  the  heads  of  the  Russians  and  have  it  fit.  If 
they  can,  all  right.  But,  heads  are  not  made  that  way.  Heads 
are  simply  awful.  They  would  have  just  as  good  a  chance 
putting  it  down  on  their  heels.  You  can  just  take  this  for  a 
prophecy,  hoping  that  it  will  not  come  true.  I  would  not  mind 
letting  the  world  stand  on  its  head  for  a  while  if  that  was  all 
there  would  be  to  it,  because  it  has  been  standing  on  the 
other  end  so  long;  but,  I  fancy  the  customs  and  habits  and 
ideas  and  superstitions  of  man  are  so  deeply  settled  that  he 
can  swear  allegiance  to  a  paper  constitution  and  forget  it  the 
next  day.  I  know  what  I  am  talking  about — at  least  I  think 
I  do.  I  hope  I  am  wrong,  but  I  am  not.  It  is  just  like  a  mis- 
sionary taking  over  a  Bible  and  a  ton  of  rice  to  convert  the 
Chinese.  When  they  have  eaten  up  the  rice,  they  have  for- 


30  DARROW-KEXXEDY  DEBATE. 

gotten  the  Bible.  Now,  of  course,  I  wish  they  would  throw 
away  the  rice  and  stick  to  the  Bible.  But,  they  will  not.  So 
I  think  Mr.  Lenine  and  Mr.  Trotsky  will  be  out  of  it  the  way 
the  czar  is  out  o  fit  and  someone  in  between  will  come  along 
and  blunder  along  a  while  and  the  world  will  not  be  so  very 
much  different,  probably  a  little  better  for  a  time. 

I  fancy  Russia  is  on  the  up-grade.  I  was  talking  about 
the  United  States  being  on  the  down-grade,  and  I  think  she 
is.  Russia  is  newer;  Russia  is  more  primitive.  There  is  no 
other  way  to  go  excepting  up!  For  us,  there  is  no  other  way 
to  go  excepting  down;  we  have  started. 

Put  this  on  a  philosophical  basis.  Man  consists  of  his 
stomach,  legs  and  a  head,  such  as  it  is.  Of  course,  a  man  can 
get  along  without  a  brain  but  not  without  his  stomach ;  that 
is  really  more  important.  That  is  the  philosophy  of  social- 
ism— the  Gospel  according  to  Saint  Marx.  And,  when  man 
digests  his  food  he  has  to  run  around  more  or  less  and  he  has 
to  have  legs  or  he  can  not  digest  his  food.  Take  a  man  like 
me,  who  does  not  believe  in  food,  and  who  doesn't  run 
around  and  his  stomach  will  go  back  on  him  after  a  while. 
This  is  all  exactly  true.  You  let  all  our  people  ride  in  auto- 
mobiles, as  they  will  under  the  socialist  commonwealth,  and 
they  will  loose  the  use  of  their  legs  and  then  their  stomachs 
will  not  digest  the  food,  so  what  use  are  their  brains?  They 
will  decay,  absolutely.  Now,  that  is  civilization.  I  believe  that 
is  civilization  just  as  sure  as  the  course  of  the  earth  is  around 
the  sun. 

Let  me  put  this  question  a  little  plainer,  if  I  can.  Civili- 
zation has  in  itself  the  seeds  of  its  decay.  As  long  as  man 
lives,  he  must  have  legs  and  arms  and  a  stomach.  He  can  get 
along  with  very  little  brains.  Most  of  them  do,  and  they 
have  too  much  brains  at  that,  for  they  do  not  use  them,  they 
do  not  need  them.  But,  his  stomach  and  his  legs  are  neces- 
sary. Now,  it  is  a  fool  world  that  they  should  be  necessary 
but,  there  they  are,  and  you  cannot  help  it.  What  man  ought 
to  have  had  was  brain  and  wings.  That  is  all  he  ever  should 
have  had;  but,  Nature,  not  knowing  how  to  do  the  job,  loaded 
him  up  this  way.  But,  he  can  not  live  without  putting  food 
down  into  his  stomach  and  running  around  so  that  it  will 
digest.  And,  when  you  get  your  flying  machines,  and  your 
automobiles  and  your  railroads,  and  man  stops  running 
around  to  hunt  his  prey,  he  is  going  to  die,  that  is  all,  and  he 
always  has,  I  think.  He  can  only  live  until  this  physical  part 
of  him  gets  so  far  up  and  then  he  comes  down  to  earth,  for 
that  is  where  he  draws  his  supply.  That  law  has  been  at  work 
forever.  Mankind  only  gets  a  certain  distance  from  the  earth 
when  he  comes  back  just  as  gravitation  draws  the  balloon 


DARROVV'S    LAST    SPEECH.  31 

back  when  it  goes  up.  An  everlasting  round,  From  work, 
running,  eating  and  digesting,  man  develops  a  certain  brain 
power,  and  when  he  is  overloaded  with  that,  he  goes  back 
again  to  the  earthly  things  to  pull  himself  up. 

Take  this  with  you  as  a  suggestion:  The  intellect  keeps 
you  always  thinking  and  dreaming.  Suppose  the  people  of 
this  world  learn  just  one  thing,  which  they  are  learning  very 
fast;  suppose  they  learn  birth  control.  Then  the  human  race 
is  done  for;  it  is  done  for,  unless  there  are  just  a  few  savages 
left  who  will  build  it  up  again.  Nature  tricked  man  into  life; 
she  lied  to  him  and  cheated  him  and  defrauded  him  and 
tricked  him  so  that  life  would  be  born  everlastingly  upon  the 
earth.  And,  when  man  is  intelligent  enough  to  learn  the 
cheat,  and  the  fraud  and  the  lie,  and  to  control  it,  then  the 
race  is  going  to  die.  The  Catholics  are  right  on  that  propo- 
sition. You  can  only  go  up  in  the  air  a  certain  distance,  grav- 
ity calls  you  back.  The  old  pendulum  is  swinging  around  for- 
ever. The  eternal  recurrence  of  things  in  the  physical  world, 
in  the  spiritual  world,  in  matter  and  in  life,  prevails  forever! 


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